Rogues must find way to tinker in money

Tom Humphries/LockerRoom: Well, it's been a fine old week for hurling and one which will, skins and all, take a little while to digest. It began last Sunday with the game of the year and no sooner had the final whistle blown than we braced ourselves against the cooling wind which would soon be pouring from the mouths of the hurling purists.

The only good games happened before you were born.

There used to be a tendency which almost killed the Irish language whereby any attempt to speak and enjoy the tongue was derided by those who insisted on mimicking the blas of the Blaskets or the unknowable nuances of Donegal Irish. Just using and enjoying the language was never enough for the Pharisees.

Hurling suffers much the same affliction. If you knew enough about it you would never describe Cork and Wexford as a classic. You'd see that every stroke was a failed hook or block, that every score was rooted in an error if you traced it back far enough.

You might argue that the game had flow, that it had meaning, that it had beauty and it had excitement till the last minute, that in its sun-drenched, excitement-filled whole it was the best advertisement the game has had in years. You might say that Cork versus Wexford entertained and enthralled you like no game has for years, and the old heads of the Pharisees will shake slowly. Tsk, tsk.

Probably the pious guardians of the game's sanctity aren't going to like Setanta Ó hAilpín very much either. He's gangly and unpredictable and sinfully contemporary. This summer most likely will launch him as a superstar of the game. They won't like that aspect of adulation either, but Setanta's eminence and originality will be wonderful and refreshing for the game of hurling.

It will take a while to see where it all leaves Wexford, everyone's favourite underdog. Twice now in recent years they have drawn games like this and threatened to gatecrash an All-Ireland final and some part of us has willed them on while another part has feared for them. What happened on Saturday was what a lot of people feared would happen to Wexford the Sunday before. It's no way to say goodbye but it's better than being tortured in an All-Ireland final.

And next year? The crisis that is looming in Wexford won't quite be fended off by the emergence of Mick Jacob's boys and a handful of others. If they have to do without the two Larrys and Liam Dunne and Adrian Fenlon for a few seasons they will struggle. And Paul Codd, who looked so potent in the league against Kilkenny this year and in the Leinster final against them last year, seems to have lost his form as well.

Codd, of course, was the long shot in the Paddy Power triple bet last weekend and it was he who paid off so handsomely with his politically dubious rant about the GAA being "tinkers and rogues".

It's easy to have sympathy for the players and the GAA as the game dawdles at this particular crossroads. This column is passionately against professionalism in the GAA and believes it will kill clubs, the spirit of volunteerism in them, while ushering in an era of commercially motivated mobility which will erode the sense of loyalty to place the GAA has lived on. It's possible to be against those things and still sympathise with players who would like to make a few bob off their own image.

I don't agree with the argument that fifty or sixty thousand people pay into Croke Park to see certain players play. They come because of tradition and place and love of the game and the sense of occasion. I don't believe the attendance at the Cork versus Wexford games would have been altered one whit by whether Paul Codd played. That doesn't mean Paul shouldn't have the right to test the commercial quality of his celebrity in other ways. If he feels his face or his name can help sell something, that's fine.

The difficulties with the Paddy Power business were many. I hate to line out on the Pharisee Intermediate side on this one, but were the stamps on the hurls not a wee bit tacky, a debasement of lovely, sacred artefacts? And were the boys not selling themselves and the occasion a little cheaply? - €750 to get your name on the hurl of Seán Óg or Paul Codd in an All-Ireland semi-final? Paddy Power must have been cackling so hard that he was long odds to survive till the replay.

The GPA have a point and the GAA have a point when it comes to this business and some reasonable way of sorting things must be found.

Paul Codd didn't become a celebrity and then go forth and permit the GAA to ruthlessly exploit that celebrity. He was reared in a club by coaches and taught the game and given opportunities and allowed thrive in a tradition that makes the GAA the last great amateur sport in the world. Its survival depends on that amateurism. Paul makes a great contribution to the GAA and it has made a great contribution to him.

Paddy Power, remember, didn't want Paul's face to sell their bookie's shop. They wanted Paul to carry their name into the big GAA occasion. They wanted to exploit the huge nationwide interest in the games. Every time the camera lingered on Paul taking a free they wanted those sitting at home to see the words Paddy Power.

The tradition and the occasion and the history of the GAA were being deployed as much as Paul Codd was.

It is not roguish to want to retain some sense of order on the issue of image exploitation, to want to preserve some of the essential dignity of the game.

Modern players have rights but it would be foolish to deny that they have opportunities too.

Somebody sent me a remarkable statistic during the week. A total of 18 past and present players from Waterford Institute of Technology were participating in the Kilkenny-Tipperary game yesterday (Tipperary: Brendan Cummins, Tommy Dunne, Eamonn Corcoran, Paul Curran, Mark O'Leary, Brian O'Meara and Paul Kelly. Kilkenny: Henry Shefflin, Michael Kavanagh, Peter Barry, JJ Delaney, Derek Lyng, Brian Dowling, Ken Coogan, Alan Geoghan, Aidan Cummins, Andy Comerford and Conor Phelan). And another seven were tied up in the Wexford and Cork business.

Those numbers are remarkable in a number of respects. Mainly they suggest that third-level education (and WIT in particular) has become an extension of the hurler's apprenticeship.

Secondly it seems that it works. Of the 18 WIT men on view yesterday 10 have All-Star awards and two (Dunne and Shefflin) have been voted Player of the Year. The All-Ireland captains for the past two years , Dunne and Comerford, were WIT men also.

The changing landscape of the third-level GAA scene (WIT have an equally impressive roster of camogie and football players - including Declan Browne) runs parallel with the alterations in the scene at the top level. Top-class GAA is mainly a young man's game now.

Apart from those elements of enjoyment and satisfaction and honour which are intrinsic to the game, there are many other rewards.

These past eight days have brought a lot of these things into focus: the hype, the liability of age, the tension between tradition and commercial and aesthetic progressivism. And the fact that deep down Paul Codd knows there are no "tinkers and rogues" baulking him at every turn. That his need to play the game has merely reached aintersection with other needs in his life and, like the rest of us, he finds it confusing.

PS: Nearly forgot about the new sliotar. Two words: bin it. Can I go senior with Pharisee Gaels now?